Einstein's waves would make a cosmic overture

A HUSHED silence often marks the wait for something big. But with gravitational waves, the silence has stayed unbroken for almost a century: we haven't heard a single one since they were first proposed by Einstein in 1916.

That's not for want of trying. LIGO, set up to listen out for gravitational waves, has spent a decade picking up everything from passing jets to storms far out at sea, but not its quarry. Now, it is set to cock a sharper ear to the cosmos. Mind-bogglingly, its detector chamber may soon be even quieter than if it contained nothing at all (see "Einstein's silence: Listening for space-time ripples").

The recent discovery of telltale marks on the cosmic microwave background was indirect evidence for gravitational waves. Detecting these space-time murmurs directly would be another huge advance, opening up an entirely new channel on the universe. So let's hope the silence is broken soon. And that what we hear next is big.

Correction:When this article was first published, it incorrectly stated that the recent discovery of marks on the cosmic microwave background was the first indirect evidence for gravitational waves. This was corrected on 10 April 2014.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Pray silence for Einstein's waves"

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